Not Just Kindles

With prices starting below the magic $100 mark, it's a great time to buy an ebook reader. But before you settle on a single device, you have some decisions to make. As you can see, Amazon's Kindle line makes up the bulk of our top picks, and for many people will be the perfect choice. But it isn't the only choice. Here's what you should consider when shopping.

What Screen Type and How Big?

Basic ebook readers use monochrome, E Ink screens to display text. E Ink looks a lot like paper, and it's easy on your eyes when reading for long periods. On the least expensive models, it's not backlit, so you'll need light to see the text, just as you would with a printed book. But most ebook readers now include edge lighting that lets you see in the dark. With each model, you can vary the intensity of the brightness from barely there to flashlight-bright. On the lowest settings, you can read in the dark while your partner sleeps peacefully next to you.

In all cases, E Ink is much easier to read in bright sunlight, while color touch screens on tablets tend to wash out, and their glossy displays can show distracting reflections.

The industry seems to have settled on six inches as the optimal display size for E Ink readers; this is what you'll find on most of Amazon's Kindles, for example. There are exceptions, though: Kobo's Aura One is significantly larger, at 7.8 inches. And if it's clarity you're after, you're in luck: 300 pixels per inch seems to be the new standard among most recent ebook readers.

Manufacturers are also improving the quality of these E Ink displays. A few years ago, page refreshes were sluggish, the entire screen flashed black with each page turn, and some early ebook readers had problems with text contrast, which made for difficult reading. That's all history. The latest readers have crisp, clear text, and employ caching schemes that almost never refresh the full page; most of the time, only the letters fade out and back in again. The page refreshes themselves are much faster than before.

Meanwhile, touch screens have an innate advantage: On-screen keyboards make it easy to take notes or run searches within the text of your books. Also, maneuvering a massive online book store on a device with a touch screen is a lot easier.

So E Ink is great for reading books, but tablet screens offer a bevy of other benefits. Their color screens mean you can read much more than books: magazines and comic books are just two examples. Best of all, even lower-cost tablets like the excellent Fire 7 can browse the web, stream video from Netflix, Hulu or other sources, play music, and run apps.

Will You Read on the Beach?

If you like to read in the bath, by the pool, or on the beach, you might want to consider buying a waterproof ebook reader. You have a few options, and for the first time ever one of them comes from Amazon. The new Amazon Kindle Oasis, as well as the Kobo Aura H2O Kobo Aura One, are all rated to withstand submersion in water to some degree. The Kindle Oasis even has page turn buttons so you can easily flip between pages when your hands are wet.

What Kind of Wireless Connection Do You Need?

An always-on cellular radio lets you buy and download books from anywhere, over the air, for free (aside from the cost of the book itself, of course). Most devices offer Wi-Fi as the base level wireless connection—at a much lower cost—with 3G cellular data only available as part of a more-expensive model.

As long as you don't mind waiting until you're at home or near a hotspot to shop for new books, Wi-Fi should work for you. A select few may still prefer to pony up for 3G to buy a new book while, say, on a long train trip, or lounging at the beach.

Internal storage capacity is not much of a concern. Most every ebook reader you can buy today can store more than 1,000 books, with some offering room for thousands more titles. And if you have more books than that, each of the major vendors offers cloud storage, letting you download books to your device whenever you need them, assuming you're connected to Wi-Fi hotspot (or anywhere you have a cell signal, if you have a 3G-capable model).

What About the Books?

This is where things get a little complex, so bear with us for a moment. There's no single universal ebook format; essentially, when you choose an ebook reader, you're making a decision up front as to which ecosystem you'll support.

With free, public domain books, you have some more flexibility, but it's actually more complicated. For example, Google offers over a million free books in the popular, open Epub format, which many public libraries now use for lending books. However, Kindles don't support Epub. Amazon launched its own public library lending tie-in, which differs on a branch-to-branch basis. Amazon also has the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which lets you borrow a book a month from a selection of over one million titles, but only if you pay $99 a year for the Amazon Prime service. It also gives you unlimited access to Amazon's Prime Reading library.

To make things even murkier, the ebook stores themselves aren't all the same. Book selection, size, and pricing varies from store to store. The best way through this thicket of digital underbrush is to spend a little time browsing ebook stores before you commit to a device. You can access both Amazon's and Kobo's ebook stores online to see which carries most of the books, magazines, and newspapers you want to read. Or, if you're planning to borrow ebooks from the library, check your local branch to see what format is in use, and then make sure the reader you want supports it.

What About Ebook Apps?

One saving grace is that many of the major ebook reader vendors have developed an entire ecosystem of apps around their chosen format. For example, you can start reading a book on your Kindle Paperwhite at home; then, while waiting in line at the grocery store, you can fire up your iPhone's Kindle app and pick up exactly where you left off in the same book, but on your phone.

The size of the app ecosystem varies by format. The Apple iPad and iPhone both run iBooks, a flexible app that looks great, but doesn't have quite the same book selection as Amazon for digital books. Amazon also makes iPad apps, along with versions for iPhone, Android, and other devices; in addition it has a Cloud Reader that works on the iPad with a direct link to the Kindle Store, and several vendors also make PC and Mac apps.

In short, if you plan to read digital books on multiple gadgets, be sure to read our product reviews, and note each manufacturer's list of supported devices.

Finally, How Much Do You Want to Spend?

This is one place where there's nothing but good news: Prices have fallen considerably across the board. Amazon's base-model Kindle is just $79.99, and for most people, it's got all the features you'll need. While tablets are mostly a separate category of consumer electronics—with higher prices—you've got plenty of good options for less than $200, all of which are still great for reading. And on the higher end, Amazon's new Kindle Oasis is $40 less than the original model. It's still expensive, but it's a good buy for dedicated bookworms.

With that in mind, these are our favorite dedicated ebook readers you can buy today. If you'd rather do your reading on a tablet, check out our top tablet picks.

Alex Colon is the managing editor of PCMag's consumer electronics team. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Writing and Literature from Pace University and got his start editing books before deciding technology would probably be a lot more fun.

Though he does the majority of his reading and writing on various digital displays, Alex still loves to sit down and read a good, old-fashioned, paper and ink book in his free time. (Not that there's anything wrong with ebook readers.)